The Cellar

by Peter Fugazzotto

  I kept waiting for the Sandman to appear suddenly at the front door, a ghost behind the screen, assault rifle in his arms, the door suddenly banging open and the dogs, foaming at the mouth, charging out.

  Instead, I reached the gravel drive without incident and sprinted to the safety of the rusted Camaro. Jay was right at my side, matching my pace. It took a few more moments for Lipsky and Amanda to arrive.

  Her breath whistled from deep within her lungs. Her jaw trembled. "Making a mistake coming back here," she whispered, I could not tell if she was talking to us or to herself. "Should have kept running. Should never have stopped."

  "We'll get your friends out," I said. "Everything will be okay."

  She laughed.

  "Shut up!" said Jay teeth bared. "I don't care about you or your friends. Don't forget that."

  "Wish we had a gun," said Lipsky.

  I peered over the hood of the car at the house. I could smell the house already, the mildew, the rot, the wetness. I wanted to turn back. It was not too late yet. The others would not think anything less of me if I did. But Tug was in there. The big dumb idiot. One of my only friends I had left in this world. A man who would do anything for me. And I knew that I could not turn my back on him. I could not leave him to the Sandman.

  "You think he's out hunting us down?" asked Lipsky.

  "I hope so," said Jay. "Cause I don't want to find him in the house."

  "I'm not going back in there," said Amanda. "I escaped once. I can't go back in there."

  "You're coming with us," said Jay. He squeezed her arm so hard she yelped.

  She suddenly broke down in tears. "Leave her be," said Lipsky. "She's not going to be any help in there. Not like this. She can keep watch and let us know if the Sandman comes back."

  I wasn't sure whether that was a good idea but we were wasting too much time. The Sandman's truck could be rolling up the driveway at any minute.

  "Where will Tug be?" I asked Amanda.

  "In the cellar. Or in the barn. Depends how far along the Sandman has gotten with him."

  "What do you mean how far along?"

  "Just go. Hurry. Rescue your friend and mine before it is too late."

  "Where do we go?" asked Jay.

  I stared at the house and then to the garage. "We split up."

  "Bad idea."

  "You and me into the house. Odds are he's there. I saw the door to the cellar I think. It had a big padlock on it. Lipsky, you run over to the barn, and just have a look from the outside. Just see if anyone's in there. You see anyone you run back to us."

  "We should stick together," said Jay.

  "No time. We're already wasting precious seconds arguing. Just do as I said."

  I did not wait for a response but took off at a running crouch towards the house. The porch boards squealed beneath my feet. I cursed beneath my breath. Jay was at my shoulder. Beyond him, I saw Lipsky running in his awkward, all elbow and knee way, towards the barn, kitchen knives in each hand. I hoped he did not find anything.

  I counted in my head to three, as if I had the courage of Tug, and then opened the screen door and entered the house again. I felt as if the squishing carpet would suck me straight down into the cellar. We passed through the kitchen again, stopping to listen. Jay stared wide-eyed at the jars of animal parts and the flies rising in a black cloud from whatever remained in the sink. He clamped one hand over his mouth and nose to block the smell and I imagine to stop himself from throwing up.

  I led us through the parlor. As we moved through the room, I spotted newspaper clippings on one wall, articles I had not noticed before. All missing person articles. From papers up and down the Sierras. Some crisp and white, others yellow and faded to near invisibility.

  I wanted to swallow but my throat lumped. What kind of monster had we found here?

  I hurried out of the parlor and into the dark hall.

  I stopped in my tracks before the cellar door. Jay bumped hard into me.

  "What the hell?" he asked.

  "The cellar door," I said. "It's unlocked."

  47

  Dank air seeped out of the open door, air so cold it felt wet against my lips. It was the same coldness that I remembered from the open grave in which we had lowered my father's coffin so many years before. A cold, moist, earthy smell, one that made me fight the chill running up my spine.

  The light ran about halfway down the stairs until the wooden steps were swallowed in complete blackness, and then a little ways beyond the steps emerged the cellar lit by bulbs hanging from the ceiling and casting a weak yellow pallor over the steps and concrete floor below.

  The steps were dizzying. They yielded beneath my feet, so much so that I feared I would step through a rotten plank, plunging all the way through to my hip. I wanted to reach out and grab the railing to steady myself but that would mean taking a hand off the axe I held in front of me. I needed to be ready to swing the axe.

  The hardest parts was where the steps were still dark, not touched by the light of the weak bulbs. With each step, I felt as if I were descending into the void and for a moment, even though I carefully placed my foot, measuring the distance from the previous step, knowing exactly the depth of the next plank should have been, it was not there and I felt as if I would step onto nothing and suddenly tumble, consumed by the darkness, forever spinning, forever falling.

  But then I touched the plank with my foot and then the next one until I emerged from the blackness, passing down into the cellar.

  Muffled barking came from above.

  Jay clutched my shoulder making me jump. "We should get out of here," he hissed. "He's back."

  "Not when we are this close to Tug," I said through clenched teeth.

  "How do you even know that he is in here? We might be just trapping ourselves."

  I swallowed any response and pulled the axe closer towards my chest.

  My eyes adjusted to the dim light of the cellar. It was a big room, nearly as big as the entire house upstairs, though I could not see the edges of the room. The light from the hanging bulbs was too weak. The room could have stretched on forever in the darkness. Wooden posts planted in concrete rose out of the ground to meet the floorboards of the first floor. The concrete at my feet crumbled and gave way to wet, compacted earth.

  Everything in the room was covered in sheets or clear plastics tarps: boxes, chairs, tables, an old exercise bicycle.

  In the center of the room sat a barber's chair. But something had been done to it. Someone had drilled shackles into it, on the arms and where feet would stretch, and a leather strap had been attached to the head of the chair. I stared at the table next to the barber's chair. Scissors and clippers and straight razors were neatly arranged. But I also saw strange-toothed saws, impossibly long pliers, an oversized corkscrew. On a shelf nested in the table, I passed over jars, filled with milky embalming fluids, jars filled with shapes like fingers and organs and eyes, but I did not linger on those. I could not linger on those.

  Jay ran his fingers across the surface of the chair and brought his fingertips back black and glistening. He shook his head, lips trembling.

  "We find Tug," I said.

  "It's blood. Human blood."

  "You don't know that."

  He let out a long crackling laughter.

  I ignored him and pressed on past the chair, careful to keep my distance, overwhelmed with a sudden fear that the shackles and straps would leap out and seize me, dragging me fighting and screaming towards the bloody leather.

  My eyes adjusted to the shadow-filled edges of the cellar and I could discern darker gaps, doorways leading further from the stairs, further from the one way out.

  Jay grabbed me by the arm. I almost pissed my pants. "How are we going to see?"

  I pulled my phone from my pocket, turned it on, and rotated the face away from me. The light was weak, diffuse, enough to penetrate the darkness for only a few feet in front of us.

  I should have charged the phone earlier. It
would not last long. But, god, I hoped we would not have to be in the cellar for long.

  We entered the first room.

  At first, I thought the room was empty. The floor eroded to rubble and puddles. Chains had been bolted to the walls. Not a single window. No other exit. But somehow a chill wind emanated from the room as if the air breathed through the moldy walls and the earthen floor.

  "Let's check the next room," I said.

  But Jay clutched my elbow. "The floor. There."

  Then I saw that what I thought was a pile of rags and stones was actually a person. Unmoving.

  "Tug," I whispered.

  The figure did not move.

  Jay pushed me forward. He had pulled out his phone as well and shone the light into the corner of the room. "Go check."

  "Tug?" I inched forward. I smelled blood and piss and shit, and something worse, putrid flesh maybe, the sickening smell of a deep infection. That could not be Tug. We had not been away from him for so long.

  I glanced over my shoulder at Jay who nodded at me in encouragement.

  "Buddy, is that you? We've come to get you out of here."

  The shape shifted, and I saw a hand creep out of from the rags. The fingers were swollen and twisted and the thumb was completely gone, severed, a blood soaked cloth wrapped around where it once was.

  I shoved my phone in my pocket so I could reach out and pull away the rags. They were soaking, cold, almost slimy to my touch. A chill shook my spine. I felt like I would never be able to wash my fingers clean, as if an evil black liquid was penetrating my skin, marking me forever.

  The person let out a low moaning. I nearly jumped out of my shoes.

  This couldn't be Tug. I had just seen him a few hours ago. He could not have become this. He was too strong to have been reduced to this.

  I gingerly pulled back the rags to reveal a face.

  Tug stared at me through one eye. The other eye was swollen shut, and his whole face has swelled up, black and blue, lips comically large, a deep gash on one cheek. He sneered revealing a mouth of bloody gums, half his teeth missing.

  "Oh, god, Tug."

  I lay the axe down next to me, and looped my hand under his arms, lifting him off the ground. He was naked, and his flesh cold and wet like a fish. He was so heavy. So hard to move. I would never be able to move him by myself.

  I stumbled back a few feet, and was about to ask Jay for help, when I was pulled to a stop, Tug jerking back, nearly slipping from my grip. One of his legs kicked towards the wall with a rattle of chains.

  A rusted iron shackle was locked around his ankle. I lowered him to sitting.

  He slumped to one side, his head lolling. Stupid laughter bubbled from his lips. "Cut it off," he said. "The axe."

  "Don't be an idiot. Where's the key? Do you know where he keeps the keys?"

  "Cut it off."

  I turned to Jay. He looked away, sideways, afraid to be a witness to what had happened to Tug. "Try the axe on the chain."

  I hit the chain as hard as I could. The blade sparked and nearly jumped out of my hand. It nicked the iron link but it was obvious that the axe would dull before it could cut through the chain.

  "We need to find the key." I turned the padlock over in my hand. God, it was heavy.

  "The kitchen," said Jay. "I remember seeing keys in the kitchen."

  "Skip. Cut it off." There was a sudden clarity in Tug's eye as if the fog of pain and misery had subsided for a moment. "Seriously, cut my foot off. It's our only chance."

  "We'll be back. We'll find the key and free you."

  I turned to follow Jay back out of the room and past the barber's chair, and as we were heading back up the steps, I heard a single word from Tug.

  "Idiot."

  48

  "Where are the keys, Jay?" I asked. We stood in the kitchen, glancing left and right, looking for the familiar glitter of metal.

  "I swear they were right here on this hook." His trembling fingers clutched the small hook screwed into the kitchen wall.

  I closed my eyes tight and tried to remember if I had seen the keys on that hook or anywhere in the house but my mind was a blur, the memories blended together: the squishy floor, the eyeballs in the jars, the newspaper clippings on the walls, the bloody barber chair.

  "What are we going to do?" asked Jay.

  "Maybe there is a crowbar or some kind of metal saw in the garage."

  "We're running out of time. This sicko's going to come back any minute now." Jay's breathing had turned quick and shallow.

  "Slow down. Relax. We'll figure something out."

  "Relax?" he hissed. "We should just do what he says."

  I shook my head, unclear what Jay was saying.

  "His foot. We should just cut it off. We can get out of here."

  I grabbed him by the jacket trying to shake some sense in him. "Are you mad? Do you really think you could just cut his foot off? It's Tug, man. You're going to saw through skin and bone while he is screaming bloody murder? That would be no problem for you? And then what? People die when their limbs are cut off. What are we supposed to do? Wrap his stump up in one of those dirty rags and hope he doesn't bleed to death? He wouldn't even be able to make it up the stairs. Not in the condition he is in. Much less with one foot. We'd have to carry him."

  Jay peeled himself out of my grip. He lowered his voice. "We should go then. What are we doing here? Pretending to be heroes? We should go. Hide. Wait until the weather changes and then get help."

  "You keep saying that."

  "It's what any reasonable person would do."

  "I'm not going to leave Tug."

  "Would you leave me?"

  I did not hesitate. "Never."

  The barking of dogs erupted from outside the house. We both ducked beneath the sight line of the window.

  "That was from the garage," Jay said.

  "Where's Lipsky? He should have been back here by now."

  The barking turned into maddened growling and I swear I heard screaming beneath the racket. The chaos was interrupted by a sudden sharp report – gunfire or something heavy slamming – and then I heard only the hurried breathing of Jay and me.

  "We should go to the garage. Find Lipsky," I said. "Better to all be together."

  Jay laughed, sharp and short. "You're an idiot. The Sandman is back. We need to get the hell out of here. Now. He took Tug. He's probably got Lipsky now. We're next. We're fools to stay here."

  "And leave them behind? Our friends?"

  Jay did not answer but I knew what his response would be. "Come on," he said and he shuffled along at a crouch, keeping below the level of the windows, heading quickly back towards the front door.

  I followed him.

  I should have put up more resistance. I should have grabbed him by the elbow and spun him around. I should have been arguing for the lives of our two friends. That's what a friend, a man, a hero would have done.

  But it was easier to just be told what to do and to follow along. It had been too much for me. I felt as if my nerves were frayed. The bloody girl coming to the door, the horror of the house, Tug in the basement, the howling of the dogs.

  I was done. I was at my limit. I needed to follow Jay to safety. I needed to get out of this nightmare.

  Jay was turning the door handle when the porch floorboards shrieked. He froze in a half-squat, one hand extended. The stench of urine filled my nostrils.

  I heard steps, someone approaching, and then the door opened.

  I could not run. I could not even move. My legs drained and buckled beneath me. My sight narrowed, the room vanishing in a shrinking black circle, and I felt as if I was staring at the open doorway through an impossibly long tunnel.

  But it wasn't the Sandman on the other side.

  It was Amanda.

  "He's coming!" she said. "He's coming and we need to hide."

  49

  I'm not sure how my marriage with Liz eroded. It wasn't any single thing. No great dramatic event. More
like the steady drip of water eating into stone over the years until one day we woke up to find a giant hole ripped into our relationship.

  I don't think that it was my fault.

  But it probably was.

  Most things in my life, I've now come to realize, were my fault.

  It's easy to say that it was something else. The situation. The pressure of being a defense attorney with long hours that kept me away. The hardness of my clients that infected me, making me a worse and worse husband. A worse and worse person. It was the pressure to earn money to give us a good life, to get us out of debt, to build the future that we deserved.

  I could also say that it was Liz's fault. She grew more distant over the years. At first she hid her anger and resentment, then she let it trickle out, and towards the end, it had become a torrent. If she would have been more understanding of my plight and suffering, things would have been different. She should have been content with what we had. She should have supported me in my struggles.

  That's the lie that it would have been easy to fall into.

  It just ate itself up.

  Maybe I had simply been naive, thinking that true love existed, that happiness lasted forever, that my dreams would come true.

  I don't blame her for anything that happened between us.

  In fact, I think it was my fault.

  I just gave up.

  I stopped caring.

  Not in the little ways of being annoyed and wanting to have space and do my own thing. Not in the way where I did not want to listen to her about her latest home improvement project. Not in the way that I would nod at her endless gossip about her circle of tennis club wives while I stared at the newspaper or my laptop reading the latest news.

  Those were the little things.

  I simply at some point stopped caring about her as my wife.

  She was just another person occupying the house with me.

  I think I tried to rationalize it that she had changed over the years, grew less tolerant, shorter tempered, less interested in my days. It was easier to think about it that way.